E3 '07: Assassin's Creed Hands-On
Perhaps you've heard of Assassin's Creed? Well, we finally take our first hands-on look at the game at E3 07.
Assassin Creed likely needs no introduction: Since its introduction at last year's E3 event, the game has been turning heads with its mysterious assassin-in-medieval-Jerusalem setting and its eye-popping graphics. A year later, Ubisoft is finally giving the press the opportunity to go hands-on with the title, and we recently had the chance to sit down for nearly an hour with Elspeth Tory, the project manager for the game's animation, as she showed us the most recent build of the game and let us play it for ourselves.
For those of you who haven't been following the title, it's worth pointing out that Assassin's Creed is what Ubisoft Montreal has been working on since the last entry in their extremely well-received Prince of Persia series. It follows the adventures of Altair, an assassin who works in the Holy Land in the 12th century, working on behalf of the mysterious Hashshashin and tasked with killing targets inside a large city. During the demo, we picked up hints that he and the Hashshashin are working against a mysterious Brotherhood, but what they represent isn't entirely clear.
Our demo began with Altair standing on a wooden beam on the roof of a building, where Altair is supposed to make what's known as a "leap of faith," which allows him to dive into a bale of hay on the street below him and thus quickly and stealthily make his way down to street level. Unfortunately, we clumsily executed a regular jump, sending Altair onto the pavement itself. While painful, the falling damage wasn't enough to kill us, so we took off toward our target, a slave driver named Talal who had set up shop near our location.
Given the game's origins, it's unsurprising that Altair moves in a manner that is, at least on the surface, reminiscent of the Prince in the Prince of Persia games. Given the free-form nature of the city in which Altair works, however, the movement system here is both more fantastic and more realistic. It's more realistic in the sense that you're unable to jump incredible distances, an acrobatic limitation that's particularly noteworthy during combat; but since the city is built with a number of extremely climbable buildings and short jumps, you'll also find yourself scampering up walls and leaping from rooftop to rooftop. This "free running" style of movement is easily accomplished in most instances, as you're capable of simply holding down the right trigger button and pressing A on an Xbox 360 controller to activate it. While holding down these buttons, Altair automatically tries to use the most fluid movement available to him in the direction he's facing, whether it's climbing up to the roof of a building or jumping from beam to beam. The primary source of interaction while Altair is free running lies in choosing his direction, as your choice of path will determine the kind of route that he will take.
You're not limited to simply running and jumping around, of course; by default, Altair will simply walk slowly through the multitude of people on the street. Your goal as an assassin is to remain stealthy and and blend in with the crowd, and there is in fact an option to hold down a button for "blend" mode, wherein Altair will move very slowly, but will clasp his hands and bow his head in a pretty good imitation of a monk. That will let you meld with the crowds and avoid the attention of guards who might otherwise become suspicious of you. If you're too impatient to deal with that, though, you can also use gentle pushes to make your way more swiftly through a crowd, or simply punch people out of your path--but that will, of course, draw unwanted attention.
When you are spotted, or when you simply don't give a damn whether or not you have to fight off a guard, you can hold down the right trigger to activate your high alert mode, which allows you to move more quickly through crowds and also attack or tackle people who get in your way. All of these actions are mapped to your controller's face buttons, and they're context sensitive. All of your actions are visible in the upper-right corner of the screen, which should make it a bit easier to get the hang of the game when you're just starting out.
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- GameSpot Score9.0Editors' Choice
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- Release: Nov 13, 2007 »
- ESRB: Mature
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